Most data recovery solutions provide you with the freedom to download the software, tell it to scan your corrupt media and see what files it can find.  This is great for those who don’t want to plunk down cash on the mere hopes of recovering cherished images, music, videos or whatever.  We’d rather see that we have a greater likelihood for success before committing the hard earned cash.  Recover My Files works that way.

When I first hit their site, I noticed the ubiquitous “Chat Now With Support” icon.  I gave it a click and was pleased to find a real live human being at the ready.  He answered my questions, addressed my doubts and explained the “try it before you buy it” functionality.  I had to run an errand, so I downloaded the software, followed the wizard as directed and let the software work its magic.

When I returned later, the software indicated that it had found everything!  I was amazed…and skeptical.  I jumped back onto their real-time chat support and told him the news and he was not surprised.  He remembered me from before and was glad that my home videos were safe.  He cautioned me to purchase the license, restore the files to my hard drive and make sure they play before I got too excited.  In the end, his caution was appreciated, but unwarranted, as all of my videos could be restored, played just fine and were safely burned to DVD using Windows Movie Maker (another post for another time).

In short, I can safely say that Recover My Files did the job for me big time.  If you find yourself in a similar pickle, download it, ask their support a question or two as to how best to move forward and then give it a whirl.  Since you don’t have to pay first, there’s really no risk on your part.

normal.dot is the default template that all documents are based on.  It has good intentions — to speed up default formatting for every document you’ll ever edit, for opening certain add-ins that you always want available, for loading macros you always want at your disposal, and more.

However, sometimes add-ins take too long to load and are no longer beneficial to you…or sometimes a macro was dropped in there that you’d like removed…or maybe you don’t know what in the world is in there, but Word is brutally slow to load.  In that case, it’s a good idea to try the following steps (do so at your own very limited risk, but absolutely no risk to us).

1. Find the location of the normal.dot file by opening Word and going to Tools->Options, select the File Locations tab, and then double click on “User templates” in the list.  Use the pop up window to determine the full path to the directory referenced in the directory selection window.
2. Close the Options windows down and close Microsoft Word.
3. Open Windows Explorer or double click on My Computer and then click through to the path you found in step 1.
4. Right click on the normal.dot file and select “Rename”.  Change the name of the file to something other than normal.dot, e.g., abnormal.dot or junk.normal.dot.
5. Open Microsoft Word again.  Word will notice the absence of normal.dot and create a fresh new version with nothing extra added in.  Note, that if you have found the source of your problem, Word will load up super quick.  In my case it went from 90+ seconds of wait time to being virtually instantaneous.

If you find that you have resolved your issue of slow-loading Word, then smile at a stranger to say thanks for the tip.  If you still have problems, try a Microsoft Update to see if there is a problem with your installation.  In any event, you must walk that path alone, weary traveler, my journey stops here.

If you suddenly realize that you really desperately needed the content of the original normal.dot (here is the very limited risk part), then you can always go back through the steps above, but this time around, change the name back to normal.dot.  The next time you open Word, it will be nice and slow again, just like you like it.

The answer lies in how often your database changes and how deadly it would be to your site (family, business, club) if you lost those changes…forever.

In this particular case, this distant client of mine left the responsibility of webhost selection to a non-technical person.  This person didn’t understand anything about their site or its architecture.  They didn’t even know to ask the question about backups.  The bad news?  They signed a 3 year hosting deal, so they are stuck trying to come up with another way to back up their site related data.

When do you think this all came up?  It was after their webhost encountered a hardware failure that caused them to lose a month’s worth of site updates.

If you’re about to make a decision about webhosting, make sure you talk to your prospects about backup plans — amount of allowed space, schedule and disaster recovery scenarios.  Will they leave it to you to restore your site or do they believe it is their responsibility?  The truth is that you will both have to work together to get everything back up and running again, but it’s good to know what to expect long before a hardware failure takes your site out of commission.

Having had experience with ServerIntellect hosting via one of my software development clients, I decided to sign up for their virtual private server plan which allows me to have unlimited domains managed under a single account.  This is what allows me to host your site along with several of my own.